4. ARMv8 Crypto Poll Mode Driver

This code provides the initial implementation of the ARMv8 crypto PMD. The driver uses ARMv8 cryptographic extensions to process chained crypto operations in an optimized way. The core functionality is provided by a low-level library, written in the assembly code.

4.1. Features

ARMv8 Crypto PMD has support for the following algorithm pairs:

Supported cipher algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES_CBC

Supported authentication algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA1_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA256_HMAC

4.2. Installation

To build DPDK with this virtual crypto PMD, the user is required to:

  • Download AArch64 crypto library source code from here.
  • Build the AArch64cryptolib library:
make
  • Add path to libAArch64crypto.pc in PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=<path_to_AArch64cryptolib>/pkgconfig/:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH
  • Build DPDK:
meson build
ninja -C build

The corresponding device can be created only if the following features are supported by the CPU:

  • RTE_CPUFLAG_AES
  • RTE_CPUFLAG_SHA1
  • RTE_CPUFLAG_SHA2
  • RTE_CPUFLAG_NEON

4.3. Initialization

Use --vdev "crypto_armv8" in the EAL options to create virtual crypto device.

User can use app/test application to check how to use this PMD and to verify crypto processing.

Test name is cryptodev_sw_armv8_autotest.

4.4. Limitations

  • Maximum number of sessions is 2048.
  • Only chained operations are supported.
  • AES-128-CBC is the only supported cipher variant.
  • Cipher input data has to be a multiple of 16 bytes.
  • Digest input data has to be a multiple of 8 bytes.